Identification cards have used magnetic data strips in conjunction with photographic prints of the card owner.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,332, Domo discloses a medical record card containing a microfilm portion having some data visible to the eye and other data visible by magnification. The directly visible data is alphanumeric character codes pertaining to emergency medical conditions of the patient and the magnifiable data portions detail the medical history.
Silverman et al. teach in U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,038, an access control system with an identification card. The card has machine recordable indicia used to choose a master microspot pattern from the machine's memory. This master pattern is compared with an identical pattern on the card for verification. The card also has space for a picture and a signature. Similarly, Idelson et al. in U.S. Pat. 4,151,667, teach an identification card having a photograph and a phosphorescent bar code pattern used for verification.
The amount of information these cards can hold is extremely limited. Data visible to the eye occupies a considerable amount of space on a card, which further limits the amount of information that can be stored. In the patent to Idelson et al., the photograph and bar code pattern overlap. Random microspot patterns can only be used for verification, while bar codes can only represent a small amount of specific data. The prior art does not provide for simultaneous reading of machine readable and eye readable information.
An object of the invention is to provide a method of recording personal information on a card, both a visual image and data to accompany that image either prior to, during, or after exposure forming such image, where the data does not overlap the visual image and to provide for simultaneous reading of both types of data.